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This celebrated life study was preparatory for the figural group at the left in Raphael's cartoon (now lost) for The Conversion of Saul, one of the original set of ten (completed) tapestries of the Acts of the Apostles (Vatican Museums), intended to decorate the Sistine Chapel on ceremonial occasions. The subject is based on Acts 9:1–7, in which, upon his conversion, Saul was baptized Paul and became known as the apostle of the Gentiles. The study explores the design for the witnessing Roman soldiers. Although the main soldier was studied from a live model, he, like his companions, was probably posed on a studio prop rather than an actual horse, the general form of the animal's hindquarters having been added by the artist from memory. The simply dressed figures, possibly the artist's assistants, would be depicted in elaborate Roman military costumes. The drawing was once in the famous collection of the dukes of Devonshire, Chatsworth.
As is often the case with Parmigianino's composition drawings, details of the subject matter here were left somewhat nebulous in the frenzy of creative outpouring. It is not precisely clear, for example, just how Saint Joseph (at the left) sits in the foreground or whether his body is supported by a landscape feature or a man-made object. The composition is envisioned as an Adoration of the Shepherds, perhaps not unlike a devotional panel of the same subject by the artist (private collection). The elegant figures in repose, especially Saint Joseph, are also evocative of Parmigianino's Rest on the Flight to Egypt (Courtauld Gallery, London). Like those undated paintings, the Bonna drawing belongs to Parmigianino's first Parmese period (ca. 1522–24).
As a painter, Jacopo Vignali devoted himself almost exclusively to religious works, especially altarpieces. This drawing may have been a study for a painting. Following common practice, Vignali perhaps gave the figure the features of a young woman from among his or his patron's acquaintances. The melancholic face possesses all the qualities of a study from life. The same face appears on a young woman in the Marriage Contract (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica di Palazzo Corsini, Rome) by Giovanni da San Giovanni (1592–1636). The two artists knew each other well and perhaps were inspired by the same model.
The leading artist of the "Dürer Renaissance," Hoffmann found his inspiration first and foremost in Albrecht Dürer's depictions of plants and animals. Although this irresistible portrait of a piglet does not copy any of Dürer's drawings directly, it does echo similarly detailed works such as his famous study of a hare in the Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna. Like Dürer's, Hoffmann's animal studies were beloved by prominent collectors, including Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. They were often kept in collector's cabinets, some in richly decorated frames.
After a successful career painting still lifes and domestic genre scenes, Chardin began to experience vision problems caused, it would seem, by certain ingredients in oil paint. For this reason, he switched, about 1770, to pastel, a medium well suited to his loose technique and mixing of colors. In the exhibition, the portrait shown here is presented beside a sheet depicting a younger boy. The two seem to have been together since their creation and were exhibited together at the Salon of 1777. Salon critics praised them for their spirited execution and warmth.
Although his paintings have fallen in and out of fashion, Greuze's drawings have never failed to inspire admiration. Red-chalk head studies such as this one were particularly sought by collectors. From the strands of hair blowing to the left to the gentle cross-hatching used to model the face, the chalk was applied decisively, with the white reserve of the paper exploited as highlights. The drawing is not connected to a known painting, but the girl's physique and hairstyle both point to a date in the late 1760s, when the artist increasingly took his inspiration from antiquity.
This drawing was made as a study for one of the handmaidens in the lost cartoon for the Beauvais tapestry The Toilette of Psyche, first woven in 1741. Boucher's figure studies were so popular among collectors that he would sometimes make drawings after his own paintings, specifically for the market. The Bonna sheet, on the other hand, was clearly part of the preparatory process, revealed by the pentimenti—places where the artist made visible changes—in the hair ribbons and along the right shoulder.
In this drawing and its verso, Sueña de un tesoro. (She dreams of a treasure), from one of his earliest albums, Goya's ink-laden brush framed his first battery of attacks on the foibles of Spanish culture, which evolved into the satirical suite of eighty etchings Los Caprichos, published in 1799. The artist's familiarity with contemporary English and French caricature helped him to transform a polite concert into a raucous performance and a young lady's dreams into a dip in a chamber pot.
An ardent sportsman, Gericault devoted much of his art to the depiction of horses. In each animal he found unique and distinguishing characteristics that he presented with sensitivity and care. While in Italy (1816–18), the artist depicted the wild races of the Barberi horses, and in England (1820–21) he painted the official derby at Epson Downs. Yet he always seems to have found the more routine aspects of equine life more appealing.
This portrait of a close family friend propped up in bed is both elegant and intimate. Manet's muted palette suggests the somber mood of the sickroom, while his dashing strokes lend it a somewhat festive air. Although pastel enjoyed a renaissance in Impressionist circles, Manet rarely took up colored chalks until the late 1870s, when he enjoyed their readiness to participate in his visits with attractive women.
This energetically worked sheet contains sketches for two of the ballerinas in Degas's The Dance Lesson (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). One dancer is standing, her profile defined by light from a studio window; the other is seated, bent over to adjust her shoe or to catch her breath in one of the rehearsal-hall slumps Degas loved to picture as contradictions to onstage performance.
While recovering from depression at an asylum in Saint-Rémy, in southern France, Van Gogh often dwelled upon memories of his childhood in the Netherlands. His powerful recollections inspired him to produce a series of drawings—including this one and Houses in the Countryside in the Snow—describing the simplicity of Dutch peasant life as well as five paintings he entitled "Reminiscences of the North."
During the eight years he lived in Tahiti, Gauguin strove to capture the essence of its inhabitants, whom he virtually idolized as the relics of an "unspoiled" civilization. Like earlier sailors who were said to jump ship once within sight of the island, the artist, too, fell in love with the people, portraying their features with appreciation and awe. For Gauguin, a young and beautiful Maori woman was a potent symbol of life's mysterious forces.
Redon, who had served as witness to the marquis de Gonet's wedding, drew this portrait of his friend's first child when she was about three years old. He made little attempt to create a realistic picture of the girl's face and dress, departing still further from the norm by placing her before an intricately colored background that he likened to an "illusion of a stained-glass window."
In the 1890s, when Redon discovered the charms of color by adopting oil paints and pastels, his art brightened considerably, but retained, nonetheless, a dark air of mystery. At the time of this pastel's creation, the artist had become drawn to the subject of a solitary boat sailing on an open sea, with two or three passengers. The significance of marine voyages to Redon has been linked with his parents' crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, from New Orleans to France, when his Creole mother was pregnant; the artist later expressed regret that he had not been born then, at sea, "a place without a country, above an abyss."